The children of Willows Preschool Wimbledon went to Brighton Beach and had an amazing experience, in fact when they came back to the nursery, they could not stop talking about what they did at the beach, how wet they get while playing in the water playground, how little the stones of the beach were, and how bride and blue was the sea.
Willows Preschool knows that bringing the children to the beach is a way of giving them in their early years the opportunity to learn and develop in a natural environment, sparking their intrinsic motivations to explore, create and be curious about the world around them. On the beach, the children can really do anything in terms of learning, like maths, literacy, physical development, social and emotional development, understanding the world, and having lots of fun while doing it.
They can really count anything: steps, stones, shells, poles of shelter, etc., and then we can link the numerals with the names of objects. Verbal counting helps to develop mathematical language, magnitude comparison, quantity identifying, and size understanding (more, less, bigger, smaller, etc.).
Inventing stories about the sea will develop the children’s curiosity and capability of putting together sequences and develop their critical thinking while explaining why things happen in their stories. Going out means the children have lots of fun and learn while exploring, it means also engaging in conversation with the teachers and the other peers, building relationships, teamwork, and friendship that may last forever.
